NRA Owns Congress – Joe Nocera

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That Spineless Gun Vote

by Joe Nocera

April 19, 2013

On April 20, 1999, Katie Lyles, a high school sophomore, was taking a math test when she heard a popping sound. “I assumed it was a prank,” she says.

It wasn’t. The fire alarm soon went off, and a teacher shouted, “This is not a drill. Go, go, go!” Katie and several classmates ran through the neighborhood, seeking shelter. All around them, they could hear the screams of sirens and the whir of helicopter blades.

Finally, a woman answered their frantic knocking. “Are you all from the high school?” she asked. When they said yes, the woman invited them in. That is where they learned that two of their fellow students at Columbine High School had gone on a murderous spree, killing 13 and wounding 21, before turning their guns on themselves.

On Wednesday, 14 years later, I met Katie Lyles in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Now 30 and married, Katie is a grade-school art teacher in Littleton, Colo., the same town where she became, in the sad vernacular of our age, “a Columbine survivor.” She was in Washington as part of a lobbying effort by the National Education Association, the big teachers’ union, to back the handful of simple, common-sense gun bills, starting with universal background checks, that the Senate would be voting on later that day.

Until the shootings in Newtown, Conn., Katie had never spoken publicly about her experience. She is still affected by what happened that day. But after Newtown, Katie realized that the school where she now teaches was as vulnerable to gun violence as Columbine had been in 1999. And she couldn’t stay silent. “I realize that my life has led me to this moment,” she says.

We talked for maybe 20 minutes before Katie and the N.E.A. lobbyists went off to their next appointment. And, of course, a few hours later, the Senate voted down every single gun proposal that was on the table. Among those who cast votes against universal background checks, which should have been a no-brainer, were four Democrats. They are: Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mark Begich of Alaska and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. (The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, changed his vote from “yea” to “nay,” but that was said to befor tactical reasons, so he could bring the legislation up again at a later date.)

I spent much of Thursday calling the offices of the four Democrats with one question: Why? Why had they voted against universal background checks? Begich’s office put out a statement claiming that universal background checks “do not reflect Alaska values.” How so? His office wouldn’t say. Although Heitkamp issued a press release boasting of protecting “the Second Amendment rights of North Dakotans,” calls to her office produced only busy signals. The phone in Baucus’s office rang and rang and rang. Nobody answered.

Of course, we all know the reason: The four Democrats — along with many Republicans — quake in fear of the National Rifle Association. In 1994, Baucus voted in favor of the assault rifle ban — and then nearly lost his re-election bid. He never again stood up to the N.R.A. Yes, his phones were undoubtedly jammed this week. Still, it seemed to me that his unanswered phone was a potent symbol. I could almost picture him cowering in his office, waiting for us to stop asking why he sold the country down the river. [emphasis added]

I loathe single-issue politics, but maybe this is what it has come to. Maybe it is going to take senators like Max Baucus losing their jobs because they wouldn’t stand up to the N.R.A. Maybe it is going to require the majority of Americans who support sensible gun laws to turn themselves into an avenging political force. I wish it weren’t so, but nothing else seems to move them — not even the sight of 20 slaughtered children in Connecticut.

On Thursday afternoon, I spoke again to Katie Lyles. She was deeply disappointed, of course, but she wasn’t ready to give up. A few months earlier, she had testified before the Colorado State Legislature as it debated stricter gun laws, including mandatory background checks and a limit to the size of magazines. The lawspassed a month ago.

“It took a long time,” she said. “Fourteen years. You can’t give up just because you lose one battle.”

She pointed out something else. Colorado has seen some of the nation’s worst gun tragedies — not just Columbine, but last year’s shooting in Aurora. “We’re a Western state,” she said. Colorado has plenty of gun owners. Yet it was still willing to pass tough new gun laws. Katie believes that all that pain Colorado has experienced is the reason.

“I fear that people are going to have to experience that pain for themselves before we can pass these bills,” she said.

“But I hope not.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/opinion/nocera-the-spineless-gun-vote.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130420

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NRA Owns Congress – Gabby Giffords

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A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip

by GABRIELLE GIFFORDS

April 17, 2013

SENATORS say they fear the N.R.A. and the gun lobby. But I think that fear must be nothing compared to the fear the first graders in Sandy Hook Elementary School felt as their lives ended in a hail of bullets. The fear that those children who survived the massacre must feel every time they remember their teachers stacking them into closets and bathrooms, whispering that they loved them, so that love would be the last thing the students heard if the gunman found them.

On Wednesday, a minority of senators gave into fear and blocked common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get hold of deadly firearms — a bill that could prevent future tragedies like those in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., Blacksburg, Va., and too many communities to count.

Some of the senators who voted against the background-check amendments have met with grieving parents whose children were murdered at Sandy Hook, in Newtown. Some of the senators who voted no have also looked into my eyes as I talked about my experience being shot in the head at point-blank range in suburban Tucson two years ago, and expressed sympathy for the 18 other people shot besides me, 6 of whom died. These senators have heard from their constituents — who polls show overwhelmingly favored expanding background checks. And still these senators decided to do nothing. Shame on them.

I watch TV and read the papers like everyone else. We know what we’re going to hear: vague platitudes like “tough vote” and “complicated issue.” I was elected six times to represent southern Arizona, in the State Legislature and then in Congress. I know what a complicated issue is; I know what it feels like to take a tough vote. This was neither. These senators made their decision based on political fear and on cold calculations about the money of special interests like the National Rifle Association, which in the last election cycle spent around $25 million on contributions, lobbying and outside spending.

Speaking is physically difficult for me. But my feelings are clear: I’m furious. I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done, and until we have changed our laws so we can look parents in the face and say: We are trying to keep your children safe. We cannot allow the status quo — desperately protected by the gun lobby so that they can make more money by spreading fear and misinformation — to go on.

I am asking every reasonable American to help me tell the truth about the cowardice these senators demonstrated. I am asking for mothers to stop these lawmakers at the grocery store and tell them: You’ve lost my vote. I am asking activists to unsubscribe from these senators’ e-mail lists and to stop giving them money. I’m asking citizens to go to their offices and say: You’ve disappointed me, and there will be consequences.

People have told me that I’m courageous, but I have seen greater courage. Gabe Zimmerman, my friend and staff member in whose honor we dedicated a room in the United States Capitol this week, saw me shot in the head and saw the shooter turn his gunfire on others. Gabe ran toward me as I lay bleeding. Toward gunfire. And then the gunman shot him, and then Gabe died. His body lay on the pavement in front of the Safeway for hours.

I have thought a lot about why Gabe ran toward me when he could have run away. Service was part of his life, but it was also his job. The senators who voted against background checks for online and gun-show sales, and those who voted against checks to screen out would-be gun buyers with mental illness, failed to do their job.

They looked at these most benign and practical of solutions, offered by moderates from each party, and then they looked over their shoulder at the powerful, shadowy gun lobby — and brought shame on themselves and our government itself by choosing to do nothing.

They will try to hide their decision behind grand talk, behind willfully false accounts of what the bill might have done — trust me, I know how politicians talk when they want to distract you — but their decision was based on a misplaced sense of self-interest. I say misplaced, because to preserve their dignity and their legacy, they should have heeded the voices of their constituents. They should have honored the legacy of the thousands of victims of gun violence and their families, who have begged for action, not because it would bring their loved ones back, but so that others might be spared their agony.

This defeat is only the latest chapter of what I’ve always known would be a long, hard haul. Our democracy’s history is littered with names we neither remember nor celebrate — people who stood in the way of progress while protecting the powerful. On Wednesday, a number of senators voted to join that list.

Mark my words: if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities’ interests ahead of the gun lobby’s. To do nothing while others are in danger is not the American way.

Gabrielle Giffords, a Democratic representative from Arizona from 2007 to 2012, is a founder of Americans for Responsible Solutions, which focuses on gun violence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/opinion/a-senate-in-the-gun-lobbys-grip.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130418&_r=0

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NRA Owns Congress – President Barack Obama

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Obama: Gun Lobby “willfully lied”

http://youtu.be/0ncnvW4oGdU

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NRA Owns Congress – NY Times Editorial Board

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The Senate Fails Americans

by THE EDITORIAL BOARD

April 17, 2013

For 45 senators, the carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School is a forgotten tragedy. The toll of 270 Americans who are shot every day is not a problem requiring action. The easy access to guns on the Internet, and the inevitability of the next massacre, is not worth preventing.

Those senators, 41 Republicans and four Democrats, killed a bill on Wednesday to expand background checks for gun buyers. It was the last, best hope for meaningful legislation to reduce gun violence after a deranged man used semiautomatic weapons to kill 20 children and six adults at the school in Newtown, Conn., 18 weeks ago. A ban on assault weapons was voted down by 60 senators; 54 voted against a limit on bullet magazines.

Patricia Maisch, who survived a mass shooting in Tucson in 2011, spoke for many in the country when she shouted from the Senate gallery: “Shame on you.”

Newtown, in the end, changed nothing; the overwhelming national consensus to tighten a ridiculously lax set of gun laws was stopped cold. That’s because the only thing that mattered to these lawmakers was a blind and unthinking fealty to the whims of the gun lobby.

The National Rifle Association once supported the expansion of background checks, but it decided this time that President Obama and gun-control advocates could not be allowed even a scintilla of a victory, no matter how sensible. That group, and others even more militant, wanted to make sure not one bill emerged from the Newtown shooting, and they got their way. A vast majority of Republicans meekly followed along, joined by a few nervous red-state Democrats, giving far more weight to a small, shrill and largely rural faction than to the country’s overwhelming need for safety and sanity.

Guns had not been on the president’s campaign agenda, but, to his credit, he and Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. came up with a solid package of proposals after Newtown that would have reduced the number of dangerous weapons on the street and in the hands of criminals. Mr. Obama traveled the country to promote it in 13 speeches, and he has spent the last weeks unsuccessfully trying to pry senators out of the pocket of the gun lobby.

The most important aspect of his proposal, in the eyes of many gun-control advocates, was the expansion of background checks, both because it closed an important loophole and because it seemed the easiest to pass. From 20 percent to 40 percent of all gun sales now take place without a background check, and the bill rejected on Wednesday would have required the check for buyers at gun shows, on the Internet and at other commercially advertised sales. It was sponsored by two pro-gun senators with the courage to buck the lobby, Joe Manchin III, a Democrat of West Virginia, and Patrick Toomey, a Republican of Pennsylvania.

The critical need for this measure was illustrated by a report in The Times on Wednesday that showed how easy it is for criminals to buy weapons on the Internet without a look at their backgrounds. One widely popular Web site contains tens of thousands of private postings of gun sales, and The Times’s investigation found that many buyers and sellers were criminals. Some of the guns have been used to kill.

A vote to continue this practice would be hard to explain to constituents, so lawmakers simply invented reasons to oppose background checks. Some insisted it would lead to a national gun registry, though the plain language of the bill prohibited that. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said it would raise taxes. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona said it would require checks even when a gun sale is posted on an office bulletin board. (There’s nothing wrong with that, but it wouldn’t.) Mr. Obama, after the vote, said those who made these arguments had “willfully lied.”

It’s now up to voters to exact a political price from those who defied the public’s demand, and Mr. Obama was forceful in promising to lead that effort. Wednesday was just Round 1, he said; the next step is to replace those whose loyalty is given to a lobby rather than the people.

“Sooner or later, we are going to get this right,” he said. “The memories of these children demand it, and so do the American people.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/opinion/the-senate-fails-americans-on-gun-bills.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130418

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Korean War Vet Reunited With Woman Whose Life He Saved Nearly 60 Years Ago

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http://youtu.be/H25HYh-j6Uk

From Stars & Stripes on line:

Korean War vet reunited with woman he helped nearly 60 years ago

by Jon Rabiroff

SEOUL — Retired U.S. airman Richard Cadwallader finally got to hug the woman who earned his lifelong admiration for the way she bravely dealt with severe burns almost 60 years ago.

Since leaving South Korea in the wake of the Korean War, Cadwallader had always wondered what became of the young girl he did his best to help after she was brought to his base in December 1953 with third-degree burns from her chin down to her waist.

On Monday, the 81-year-old was reunited with the woman he knew only as the “burned girl” — Kim Yeon-soon, now 72 — at a Seoul hotel.

With two dozen members of the Korean media looking on, the two came together in a warm embrace. Kim, whose scars from the accident were easily seen Monday around her chin, seemed to take every opportunity during the half-hour proceeding to hug or hold onto Cadwallader and members of his family.

The two exchanged gifts: Cadwallader gave Kim a watch to remind her of their time together decades earlier, and she gave him and his wife, Nancy, hanboks, traditional Korean garb.

“I’m feeling very excited, very proud [and] very happy for Miss Kim,” Cadwallader told a news conference. “It’s just a marvelous, marvelous experience, and I’m so appreciative of what the Korean government has done to bring us back together again.”

Through a translator, Kim said, “I could never have imagined that I would have the opportunity to see him again. I’m very excited and very happy.”

It was just months after the end of the Korean War when Kim said a young relative accidentally knocked over an oil lamp, setting her on fire and leaving her in agony.

Kim said her mother carried her on her back about five miles to the nearest U.S. military installation, a remote base on the edge of the Yellow Sea, west of Suwon.

There, Cadwallader — an airman second class and radio mechanic — looked on in awe as the base medic tended to the young girl, peeling off a tar-like substance someone in the girl’s village had applied to the burn that had adhered to her flesh.

“The process was slow and agonizingly painful,” he told Susan Kee, who is working on a book about the personal stories of U.S. Korean War veterans. “She endured extreme pain in silence and without any tears.”

On Monday, Cadwallader said, “I can’t tell you what a brave young lady this woman was 60 years ago, in terms of recovering from her burns. They were very, very severe.

“She and her mother were two examples of the most courageous people I’ve ever known, so this is a monumental day for me.”

Cadwallader has said previously he did all he could to help the girl and make her comfortable then, and when she returned to the base for follow-up treatment in the weeks that followed. But, it was clear she needed more extensive treatment on the infected area, and to minimize scarring and facial disfigurement.

That opportunity came with the arrival of three helicopters from a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital.

Cadwallader said he was able to talk the major in charge into flying the girl to a burn unit in Pusan, which prompted the airman to lead a high-speed recovery mission via Jeep over muddy and washed-out roads to find the girl at her village and get her back to the base before the choppers left.

As he prepared to leave South Korea three months later, Cadwallader had a chance encounter with the girl, who waved at him from a passing military vehicle and gestured that her wounds were healing well.

Nevertheless, the Scottsdale, Ariz., resident said he wondered for decades how life turned out for the girl and, with the help of Kee and the South Korean Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, she was located earlier this year. The ministry paid for the trip to South Korea for Cadwallader and his family.

His daughter, Dawn Girard, said her father often told her stories as she was growing up about the courageous littled burned girl.

“She’s had an impact on my life that she’s not even aware of,” Girard said. “She’s taught me a lot.”

Cadwallader and Kim were scheduled to be the guests of government officials at a number of ceremonies in the days ahead. The retired airman was also expected to visit Kim’s hometown and hit a number of tourist attractions during his five-day visit.

Ministry officials have said they hope to stage similar reunions in the future between allied servicemembers who helped the South during the Korean War and locals they want to see again.

Kim — who went on to marry, have three children and work in a variety of jobs, including farming and clam digging — has said she often thought about Cadwallader and the other Americans who helped her.

“If it were not for the U.S. troops … I might have died,” Kim said previously. “Richard helped save my life. He was heaven-sent.”

http://www.stripes.com/news/korean-war-vet-reunited-with-woman-he-helped-nearly-60-years-ago-1.214494

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NRA Wins as Thousands of Americans Die

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How the NRA won

Most Americans support tougher gun control measures. Too bad the gun lobby has so many politicians in its pocket

By Joe Gandelman | 6:24am EST

Wayne LaPierre, head of the National Rifle Association, at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 15.

There's no denying it: The National Rifle Association has won — again. Even though more than 3,000 Americans have died via gun violence since 20 children and 6 adults were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary in December, the NRA has somehow managed to triumph. The victims' families and gun control advocates have lost. Forget an assault weapons ban — or any other serious gun regulation. It's not happening. 

The Washington Post notes that not only have the NRA's tactics cowed politicians and beaten back substantive national gun control efforts, but in some instances, they've actually led to moves to make guns easier to get. Meanwhile, at least a dozen GOP senators have signed on to Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's call to filibuster any gun control measure.

This is just one more issue where polls show Republicans at odds with mainstream America. A Morning Joe/Marist poll found six in 10 respondents — including 83 percent of Democrats, 43 percent of gun owners, and 37 percent of Republicans — believe that the laws covering gun sales should be stricter.

Here's the problem: The NRA has a lot of money, and NRA donations go overwhelmingly to Republicans. They are unsurprisingly blocking tougher gun control.

Writes The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky: "I have never seen a situation in which a Congress, terrified of a particular lobby, has behaved in such open contempt of American public opinion as it's doing now on guns." [emphasis added] 

The brutal truth is that the 20 little kids who perished in Newtown in a terrifying massacre involving 154 rounds fired in 5 minutes was NOT enough to significantly move the dial on gun control. These kids are now (more) collateral damage in the decades-long political gun-control ballet involving lobbying money and the way American politics truly functions. Poll numbers alone won't enact change.

Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein writes: "See, the problem here is equating '90 percent in the polls'" — polls show that 9 in 10 Americans support universal background checks — "with 'calling for change.' Sure, 90 percent of citizens or registered voters... will answer in the affirmative if they're asked about this policy. But that's not all the same as 'calling for change.'...Action works. 'Public opinion' is barely real... At best, public opinion as such is passive. And in politics, passive doesn't get results."

We know the pattern: (1) a massacre; (2) intial shock, media saturation, and noble-sounding rhetoric from politicians about change; (3) statements of regret or lawyerly type statements with loophopes from the gun lobby; (4) mobilization of the NRA and ideological echo chambers to go on the attack and wield political clout. 

I was one of many staffers on The San Diego Union who covered James Huberty's July 18, 1984, San Ysidro McDonald's massacre. Huberty fired 250 rounds and killed 21 people from 8 months to 74 years old. He wounded 19 more before being shot dead by a sniper. There was outrage in the immediate aftermath. Then reform efforts failed.

For real gun control to triumph, it must get through a huge maze of institutional, political, and ideological media obstacle courses. 

Gun control advocate Matt Bennett told the Washington Post that if there was a secret ballot on gun control it would "pass overwhelmingly, because from a substantive point of view most of these senators understand that this is the right thing to do." Politics hold them back.

President Obama recently expressed dismay over these sad truths, and reminded America about the first-graders butchered in Newtown: "The entire country was shocked, and the entire country pledged we would do something about it and that this time would be different," he declared. "Shame on us if we've forgotten. I haven't forgotten those kids. Shame on us if we've forgotten."

Shame on us, indeed. Because in American power politics — as the long battle for gun control stymied by big money, cowardice, and lack of organized-for-action public outrage shows — there is no change. Just more and more cases of collateral damage. 

http://theweek.com/article/index/242411/how-the-nra-won

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